The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

  “My dad’s okay, right?” Justin heard himself say. “He’s not hurt or anything—”

  “Sod off,” the mercenary said, red-faced, and he shoved Justin aside so hard that Justin’s crash into the wall nearly made him lose the sound track playing in his head. Nearly.

  It’s the End of the World as We Know It . . .

  Justin discovered he had fallen to the floor. He was dizzy, and it was hard to see. Everything looked white at the edges, like overexposed film. He’d had a hard day. He would have to tell Holly what a day he’d had, between watching the torture, seeing the scientist get shot, then hearing his father’s screams. But he’d also gotten a pretty decent refresher course on cardiovascular resuscitation, and he now felt confident he could do it again if he had to, if Caitlin or Casey drowned in the swimming pool. That was one good thing, at least.

  The mercenary beat Alexis to the gun on the floor. He wrapped one arm around Alexis’s neck, holding the gun to her head, but somehow Alexis wasn’t paying any attention to him. Although it was more difficult now, she kept pumping the scientist’s chest, trying to keep his blood circulating even though his heart had stopped long ago. Justin admired her determination, he had to say that. He felt guilty that he was shirking his breathing duties, that he’d left Alexis to do it all herself. How could she help the scientist breathe with Baylor hanging on to her?

  “Keep back, or this lady gets it in the head!” the mercenary shouted to the doorway. He was gasping, just like the scientist had been earlier. Desperate. Justin wondered what Baylor had seen in the hallway to make his eyes so wide. Had his father seen it, too? “Did you hear what I said?”

  There was silence, except for the shriek of the wind. For the first time, Justin realized that one of the windows downstairs must have broken, because the wind was moaning throughout the house like something living. Justin could feel the wind’s intrusion; his ears were popping. Now that one window had broken, others would break, too. Even the ones with shutters. And then the floodwaters would come, of course. Forty days and forty nights. To wash it all away.

  It’s the End of the World as We Know It . . .

  “Throw your gun where I can see it, and come to the doorway with your hands empty. Do it before I count to five, or I’ll kill her just to spite you!” Baylor shouted, spitting.

  Alexis wriggled, crying out, because he’d nearly pulled her too far from the scientist. Still, her reaching hands found the scientist’s chest and pushed down. She was a hell of a doctor, Justin thought. Maybe she could heal his father, too.

  As he thought of his father, Justin noticed that he was shaking all over. His body had cramped into a ball, and he was trembling in spasms that made it nearly impossible to move. His body had never done this to him before. He wondered what his body would do next.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . . ,” Baylor was counting.

  Something slid across the tiles outside the doorway, and suddenly a black gun lay in plain sight. Justin’s teeth clicked together as he trembled.

  “Now come where I can see you! Hurry up!” Baylor shouted. “Show me your hands first!”

  Justin was impressed with the way Baylor gave orders, but he forgot how impressed he was when the black man appeared. The man strolled into the doorway, his empty hands raised. There was no fear in the man’s face, as if he were the one holding the gun and Baylor was at his mercy. The man’s eyes were not quite alive, not quite dead, something in between. His mouth was nearly smirking, but his face was blank beyond that. Like a department-store mannequin’s face, expressionless. The sight of the man overtook the room like a looming shadow.

  Justin had seen this man before. He’d seen his face only yesterday, when he’d done the Internet search on Alexis Jacobs. This was Mr. Perfect, the serial killer who had vanished from the morgue. Alexis Jacobs’s brother-in-law. He was one of them.

  “If you shoot this woman,” the unarmed African said, not raising his voice, “I’ll see to it that you die slowly. Over several days. Now, release her.”

  Baylor blinked at the man, taken aback by his words and manner. He must see it, too.

  “Fuck off! How many others are in the house?” Baylor said to him, his voice remarkably free of fear. He jabbed the gun at Alexis’s temple so hard that she cried out. “Tell me who sent you.”

  He doesn’t understand, Justin thought, awed. How could he not understand?

  The African in the doorway did not answer, and his face didn’t change. His eyes stared at Baylor, scalding. The African took a step forward, until he was standing directly over his gun.

  “S-stay where you are!” Baylor yelled, and this time the fear was there. Alexis strained against Baylor, still pumping the scientist’s chest with gritted teeth. Justin wondered how she could breathe, with Baylor pulling on her neck like that. “Answer my question! How many?”

  Then, Justin’s rage came. The sight of Baylor’s arm tightened around Alexis’s neck did it; the mercenary was threatening to interrupt her work on the scientist, their work, and it pricked something buried deeply in Justin’s core. Judgment Day was upon them—anyone could see the signs all around them, could hear it in the squall—and this mercenary might be standing in the way of him and his salvation. The African did not need him, but Alexis did.

  It’s the End of the World as We Know It . . .

  Justin realized he had brought himself to his feet. He was lurching forward, one foot in front of the other. No, he was running.

  Baylor looked at Justin with a cry of surprise, raising the gun toward him. Justin stared straight into that dark barrel, but he couldn’t stop running. He expected to hear the report, to see the smoke, just like when his father had shot the scientist. Bang.

  But there was nothing except a whistling sound. When Justin tackled Baylor, the mercenary’s weight was already sagging, and he crumpled to the floor beneath Justin without a grunt. Baylor still gripped the gun in his hand, but he had not fired it. Why not?

  He hadn’t had the time, Justin realized suddenly. A thick-handled knife was embedded so deeply and cleanly in the side of Baylor’s neck that the wound was not even bleeding yet. Baylor was very dead, like magic. Justin looked up at the African, full of wonder.

  The African was in a half-crouching throwing stance, one leg ahead of the other like a softball pitcher, leaning forward with his arm frozen where he had released his knife, underhanded. Perfect speed. Perfect aim. Perfect precision. All he’d needed, apparently, was an instant’s distraction. Neither Justin nor Baylor had seen the knife coming, as if it had appeared from the air itself.

  “What were you thinking, man?” Justin whispered to the dead man beneath him. He grabbed Baylor’s collar with both hands and lifted him, watching Baylor’s head dangle back limply on his skewered neck. “Are you crazy? He’s a fucking immortal.”

  His mind broken, Justin heard himself laughing.

  • • •

  Clearly, madness had found this room. The stranger was laughing over one corpse, while Alexis was performing a useless lifesaving procedure on another. Even from where he stood, Dawit could see the ring of bloodstained carpeting around Alex’s dead patient’s head. Jessica’s sister looked horrible, so much that the sight of her pained Dawit: her clothes were torn, and her face and arms were covered with unsightly marks, burns. She had been tortured, he realized. Her face was streaming with the tears of a lunatic.

  “David,” she called hoarsely, unable to raise her voice further. “Help me. Please.”

  Her eyes, which looked identical to Jessica’s at that moment, broke Dawit’s heart. He watched her futile gestures, the chest compressions, unable to find the words to answer her.

  Dawit scooped up his Glock as soon as he heard footsteps behind him, but when he turned to face a potential attacker, he saw only Teferi running toward him from the stairs. Teferi’s shirt had a sizable bloodstain beneath his rib cage from his bullet wound, but apparently he was not as badly injured as Dawit had believed. He was glad of
it. Teferi would only be useful if he was awake.

  “I wanted to shoot from below,” Teferi explained, breathless. “But the woman was too close to him. I might have shot them both. I dared not take the risk.”

  “A wise decision,” Dawit said, glancing toward the blond-haired man laughing on top of the dead mercenary. Dawit noticed that the blond man’s eyes were full of tears even as he laughed. “Luckily, I managed on my own. With the help of this madman.”

  “Do not harm him, Dawit. He is my own blood.” Teferi’s face burned with earnestness as he said the words. Perhaps madness runs in Teferi’s genes, Dawit thought, but he did not utter it aloud. Still, from the look of disdain that passed across Teferi’s face, Dawit knew his brother had heard.

  “I will not harm him. He aided me. We will decide his fate later,” Dawit said gently, squeezing Teferi’s shoulder to try to soften his unkind thought. “Are there others?”

  “Upstairs,” Teferi said, glancing toward the ceiling. He winced, pressing a blood-streaked hand to his injury. Teferi hid his pain honorably, Dawit thought. “One more guard . . . and Shannon. It is time for him to answer for what he has done. I am ashamed it has come to this.”

  “Then our business here is not finished,” Dawit said. “Your skills are sharp today, brother. You are more advanced than you knew.”

  Teferi grinned, obviously gratified by the compliment. Dawit realized he had never paid Teferi a compliment before now, treating him only with disrespect he did not deserve. Teferi had been foolish to allow Shannon to live those many years ago, but Dawit understood that a father’s love defied reason, sometimes leading to fatal errors of judgment. He, of all men, could not place himself above Teferi.

  “David . . . please,” Alex’s voice interrupted, so meek and weary and hopeful. “Please.”

  With a sigh, Dawit gazed once again at his wife’s sister. Jessica would not be happy to see Alexis like this, he realized. Gently, he touched Teferi’s shirt, squeezing the bloodied portion with both hands until he felt a thin coat of his brother’s blood on his palms and fingers. Then, he walked to Alex and knelt beside her, gazing into her miserable eyes. He and Alexis had never learned to get along, but he supposed that was more his fault than hers. He had not tried. He had not cared for any mortals during that time, only Jessica and Kira.

  This time, he vowed, he would do better.

  “You’ll be all right, Alex,” Dawit said, referring to both her physical and mental state. Alex sobbed, still straining to compress the dead man’s chest. She had to be exhausted, he thought. He wondered how long she had been working on this man. Compassionately, Dawit raised his hands to Alex’s face and began to smear her skin with blood, touching the burned areas as gently as he could. “You’ll soon be lovely again.”

  “I don’t . . . care . . . about . . . that,” Alex said forcefully between compressions. “Not my face. David. Please. You know you can do it. Please give him some blood. Don’t make me beg you.”

  Finally, Dawit understood. He touched the man’s head, probing the wound at the back of his skull. It wasn’t deep, but so much blood had been lost. So much tissue damage.

  “What happened to him?” Dawit asked her.

  “He was . . . shot. At close range.”

  “He’s dead, then, Alex. Blood will not help him.”

  “But he . . . had a pulse. I felt it. I’ve kept his heart pumping since . . . it happened.”

  “How long?”

  At that, Alex’s face wrenched with sorrow and she shook her head. “I don’t . . . know.”

  “He’s dead,” Dawit said again, touching her burned chin and neck with his bloody fingertips. True, Jessica had just saved a comatose child on life support with her blood. But although the Life Brothers had never performed sanctioned experiments to determine the blood’s effect on mortals, Dawit guessed that this man was worse off. Blood alone would not revive him. “The blood doesn’t heal the dead.”

  “Dawit,” Teferi broke in, anxious. “Shannon is upstairs. We should hurry.”

  Alex’s eyes tore into his. The look she gave him was jarring, like bright daylight. “I love him, David,” Alex said, her jaw trembling. “I need him to live. Jessica was dead, too, wasn’t she? I know what you did for her. You wanted to do it for Kira, but you didn’t have time.”

  Stunned, his mind feeling quiet, Dawit sat on the carpeted floor next to the corpse. At this instant, everything about Alex—her voice, her face, her heart—reminded Dawit of his wife. Jessica, it seemed, was beside him, watching him.

  “I cannot,” Dawit said softly. “The Ritual is forbidden. I’ve caused too much harm.”

  “He’s a good man, David. He got himself free . . . somehow. And they shot him . . . because he came back for me. For me. And he has a son, David.”

  Dawit blinked, glancing again at the dead man’s face. The man was in his midfifties perhaps, with pleasant features marred by his bloody mouth. Dawit realized he had not bothered to notice the man’s face before now. He was only a mortal! And yet, seeing him, Dawit felt strangely moved. If it was true that Dr. Lucas Shepard had arrived at the Botswana clinic at the time of the raid, then he had given his life to save a woman he barely knew. Would Dawit himself have been so noble as a mortal?

  “I do not believe the Ritual can work on him, Alex. Even if you have kept his blood circulating, I do not know if . . .” Dawit paused. Truly, he did not know. His mouth felt dry, gummy. “And even so, it is forbidden.”

  “Yes,” Teferi said compassionately. “He speaks the truth. For good reason, it is forbidden. You have suffered needlessly, dear lady, because the blood has been abused.”

  Their voices were fragile beneath the sound of the wind and the rain lashing against the house. Another crash came from downstairs as large items of furniture fell victim to the winds, or perhaps rising water. The madman beside them laughed on, unaware, hugging the mercenary whom Dawit’s blade had felled. Suddenly, without understanding why, Dawit felt wretched. He gazed up at Teferi, his eyes full of questions. What should he do?

  Teferi looked surprised, his face frozen. Then, he shook his head rigorously.

  The Covenant, Dawit. We are the last.

  “David, please,” Alex said, truly pleading. “Please.”

  “I cannot,” Dawit said, less kindly this time, although Alex’s voice tore at a conscience he had not known he possessed. “Stay here until I return for you.”

  He stood up, trying to erase Jessica’s image from his mind, reminding himself that Alex was just another mortal, she was not his wife. He did not owe her anything. He had saved her life, and that was enough. Alexis should be thankful. She would find another mortal to love.

  With that, he walked away to find Teferi’s son, hearing Alex’s sobs behind him.

  56

  Someone was playing the piano. Jessica followed the music.

  She must have escaped from her parents’ house, because the bees were gone. Jessica was in the realm she had first visited with the help of the Life Colony’s dream-sticks, walking through the early-morning woods in a hazy dream. She felt peaceful, but she suspected the peace was designed to deceive her. She couldn’t stay here, and she certainly couldn’t rest.

  She saw a man playing an upright piano at the base of a giant redwood tree that dwarfed him. A tall man, he had to hunch over the piano as his long fingers massaged the keys. He was enjoying himself. His music was lovely, perfect.

  “Have you seen my daughter?” Jessica asked the man, standing beside him.

  He glanced up at her, but he didn’t stop playing. “Which one? I just saw the one with pigtails, the taller one.” He nodded his chin toward an area where the trees formed a small, mossy clearing illuminated by the sun. “She went that way.”

  Pigtails? That was Kira, then. He had seen her.

  “Was she happy?”

  “Looked very happy to me. She came to hear me play. She loves music.”

  “I know,” Jessica said, relieved. “Her father
taught her that.”

  Jessica gazed sadly toward the clearing, wishing Kira were still there. But she was not, and Jessica could not go look for her. She was having trouble remembering exactly what, but she had something else to do. Something to do with her other daughter, Bee-Bee. Fana.

  Suddenly, Jessica wondered why she hadn’t realized before that the piano player was Lucas Shepard. She should have known right away. They had never met, but she knew him well.

  “The healers in your family go back hundreds of years,” Jessica told him.

  “That right?” he said, raising an eyebrow as he looked at her.

  “Oh, yes. Even before your father. Your grandfather knew herbs, and his father before that. It was in your blood. That’s why They went after you and your son. You scared Them.”

  “I always figured it was something like that, something personal.” The man shrugged. “But I guess it doesn’t matter now.” He turned his attention back to his fingers. He was playing Scott Joplin’s “Solace,” a song David loved. “I just saw this piano, and I wanted to stop and play. I haven’t played in ages. I have an appointment, though.”

  “You do?”

  He grinned. “Sure do. Going to see my wife.”

  Jessica glanced toward the clearing again, which had grown slightly mistier. She could see the clouded form of a woman there, just beyond the tree line. Was Kira there, too?

  “Thank you for helping Jared, Jessica,” Lucas said. “You put everything right.”

  “I was supposed to help him. You always knew that.”

  “I guess I did, but thanks all the same.”

  The air had been warm before, but now Jessica felt a chill. For the first time, she noticed an unsightly hole in the back of Lucas’s head, where a small chunk of his scalp had been blown off. Seeing it, she felt panicky, nearly sick. “I’m losing my blood, Lucas. I have to hurry.”

  “Well, if it’s your other daughter you’re after, just walk on into the woods. Into the shadows. She’s there somewhere. Follow the sound of the wind. And keep calling. She may not answer back, but she can hear you.”